Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#41

Post by davidw » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 11:57 AM UTC

derwiki wrote: post #25

paul wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the food at Facebook. People underestimate how important good food is.

But not to everyone. One of the benefits of working in SoMa is that people who care about good food can get it, and people who just want to grab a burrito from the taco truck can do that too.

I get plenty of great food here in Italy, but I would absolutely kill for a decent burrito. In some dream future where I've made a ton of money and decided to continue living in Italy, I would open a good Mexican restaurant here. It would probably lose money, but I would not care. I would have good Mexican food to eat.

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#42

Post by wyclif » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 12:07 PM UTC

donaq wrote: post #37

mattmanser wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can. It's very easy. Everything Google makes apart from Google search. The rest of Google is minor and tiny compared to Facebook. They have one seriously profitable product. At the moment, the rest of it is all fluff.

I wouldn't say Android is fluff.

Agreed. I wouldn't say Gmail is fluff, either. Of course, he's equating fluffiness with non-profitability, but I think that's wrong. I doubt he'd be willing to stand up in front of a roomful of geeks at a conference and call Twitter fluff.

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#43

Post by vidar » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 1:04 PM UTC

paul wrote: post #23

avar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least he didn't mention how great the food was. That's a step up from every "I love being at Google" post ever.

I love the food at Facebook. People underestimate how important good food is.

Do you agree with the OP about the values of FB?

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#44

Post by Jun8 » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 2:12 PM UTC

holman wrote: post #8

I despise posts like these. I hate being so negative about it, but it doesn't say anything. "Facebook has smart employees. Facebook wants you to learn new things. Facebook has impact." None of it is novel or interesting. I wish there were more of a culture of insider writing while the events were going on. When Facebook pushed Questions and then retracted it, I'd love to see a blog post about "Yeah, we pushed Questio…

Compared to "I adore working at Google", you have to agree posts such as these are a rarity. I found the post informative, yes, perhaps a bit PR-looking, but it was a great read just a day after pg's article on hacker culture.

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#45

Post by joelmichael » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 2:51 PM UTC

noahth wrote: post #36

awesome post, until he calls the folks he manages "rockstars." can we please all just move past that ridiculous cliche??

I like it more than "hacker."

Re: Reflecting on 3 Years At Facebook

#46

Post by krobertson » Thu, Aug 12, 2010, 4:33 PM UTC

moultano wrote: post #5

The "break things" part of "move fast and break things" is something Google could learn a bit from. (Speaking as a Googler.) We're great at adding 9s of reliability, not as great at sacrificing reliability for progress. You can only move so fast when everything must work. This is the liability I guess of having a huge launch audience for even minor products.

Speaking as a developer of Facebook apps, Facebook truly does like to break things, and it is incredibly annoying.

Google doesn't need any of that.